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For much of the nineteenth century, the nervous system was a medical mystery, inspiring scientific studies and exciting great public interest. Because of this widespread fascination, the nerves came to explain the means by which mind and body related to each other. By the 1830s, the nervous system helped Americans express the consequences on the body, and for society, of major historical changes. Literary writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe, used the nerves as a metaphor to re-imagine the role of the self amidst political, social and religious tumults, including debates about slavery and the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. Representing the 'romance' of the nervous system and its cultural impact thoughtfully and, at times, critically, the fictional experiments of this century helped construct and explore a neurological vision of the body and mind. Murison explains the impact of neurological medicine on nineteenth-century literature and culture.
For much of the nineteenth century, the nervous system was a medical mystery, inspiring scientific studies and exciting great public interest. Because of this widespread fascination, the nerves came to explain the means by which mind and body related to each other. By the 1830s, the nervous system helped Americans express the consequences on the body, and for society, of major historical changes. Literary writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe, used the nerves as a metaphor to re-imagine the role of the self amidst political, social and religious tumults, including debates about slavery and the revivals of the Second Great Awakening. Representing the 'romance' of the nervous system and its cultural impact thoughtfully and, at times, critically, the fictional experiments of this century helped construct and explore a neurological vision of the body and mind. Murison explains the impact of neurological medicine on nineteenth-century literature and culture.
Introduction; 1. A bond-slave to the mind: sympathy and hypochondria in Robert Montgomery Bird's Sheppard Lee; 2. Frogs, dogs, and mobs: reflex and democracy in Edgar Allan Poe's satires; 3. Invasions of privacy: clairvoyance and Utopian failure in Antebellum romance; 4. 'All that is enthusiastic': revival and reform in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred; 5. Cui bono?: Spiritualism and empiricism from the Civil War to American nervousness; Epilogue: the confidences of anxiety.
Murison explains the impact of neurological medicine on nineteenth-century literature and culture, particularly Hawthorne and Beecher Stowe.
Justine Murison is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
"In this fascinating study, Justine Murison investigates the
various discourses surrounding the workings of and roles played by
the nervous system in nineteenth-century literature and culture. In
the course of tracing circuits of exchange between body and mind,
individual and surrounding environment, she calls attention to a
variety of applications for new, oftentimes contested,
understandings of physiological integrity and vulnerability in the
era’s cultural, national, and political movements....Murison’s
attention to “the role of embodiment in constructing social,
historical, and most of all, fictional narratives” (p. 12) reflects
the fact that her project is part of a very big, field-changing,
post–“neuroscientific turn” (p. 175) methodological approach, and
it’s exciting work to watch unfold."
-Maura D’Amore, THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY
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